


Aziraphale Sips His Tea

by caracalBlue



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-06
Updated: 2019-10-06
Packaged: 2020-11-24 19:41:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20913041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caracalBlue/pseuds/caracalBlue
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley relax at the bookshop after finishing up their stint at the Dowlings’, bicker a little, and discover that Crowley has a very sensitive head of hair.  Also includes some musing about what they’re each made up of, after all this time.  Also includes that feel where you jokingly ask your BFF to smooch you and abruptly realize you’re a little too inlove for that to be a good joke :’’’)





	Aziraphale Sips His Tea

**Author's Note:**

> *Walks up late to the GO party with a bottle of cheap wine and a box of Saltine crackers*  
Y’all want to hear about my headcanons.
> 
>   
Okay but also two (3) things:  
> If you see a typo or a tense slip lemme know because I didn't mean it  
> If you come across some phrasing that just Hurts your Brain lemme know because I am not typically a writer of fiction-words and I'm very curious to see how this went  
> Some kind soul please help me with the tags, I am new here and don't Understand :''(

~

“Oh, don’t be a _prude,_ Angel”

“I beg your pardon?”

Aziraphale has just settled in comfortably with tea and book. Crowley has sprawled (comfortably? One would question) across the couch. He had been still for a moment, ostensibly to start the series of naps he’d been rhapsodizing on about for the better part of a decade. Now he’s shifting restlessly.

Ah. Not sleepy yet. _Bored._ He is looking to Aziraphale to entertain him, wear the last bit of fight out of him. Aziraphale will indulge, but the bait has to be better. He waits expectantly. Crowley fumbles at the lack of a bite.

“It’s just we-- I mean we’ve been. 5 years? Or so? Together, at the Americans’? Godparents, just like we planned. Well you, you were a Godparent, and I was more of a...Badparent I guess--”  


Crowley rambles, and Aziraphale waits. Other times he might throw Crowley a line, a distraction, but he’s not feeling particularly charitable at the moment. He’s exhausted as well. He was hoping to recharge in his own way, with hot tea and a familiar book. He will. As soon as Crowley works whatever this is out of his system.

Crowley sputters out, and Aziraphale sips before giving him a look of decadently feigned curiosity, snatching back at the edges of the word he’s just realized Crowley was trying to bury in the chatter.

“A _prude_ though, Crowley? I don’t follow.”

Crowley considers for a moment. Opens and closes his mouth. Scrunches his nose. Cracks his neck. Considers the verbal trap he has sprung on himself.

“I just meant...” he says slowly (sincerely), before seeing the way out in an air of exasperated nonchalance “Come sit over _here_, why don’t you? I reckon we can spare ourselves a _moment_ of camaraderie for a job well done.”

Aziraphale considers needling him further. (A prude! As if Aziraphale doesn’t know and despise all three angels who invented the very concept of excessive prudence, and an odious dozen more who’d take the insult for a compliment). But the important thing is that Crowley’s attempt at distraction has already been neatly Thwarted, and he's being offered the temptation as a request. And really, it's barely even a Temptation so long as he accepts before he considers whether or not he Should.

“We don’t know _how_ the job went, yet!” frets Aziraphale, but he lifts his chair across the room to settle it by Crowley’s head without further protest.

“Job done adequately then,” Crowley amends absently. He watches as Aziraphale transports tea, book, lamp, end table, and arranges them just so. His restless energy is draining away already. Aziraphale wonders if that’s all he needed: one lukewarm temptation, a harmless, token victory to take the edge off the monumental thing they had done, may have done, (hoped beyond hope to have done).

Aziraphale could indulge in that, just this once.

(If only to get his peace, of course.) 

~

The minutes slide by. Crowley slides into a quiet slumber, and Aziraphale (_f__inally_) into his book. Reading—like dreaming—can be an exercise in relinquishing one’s conscious to travel uncharted territory, but today’s book was not a new one. Instead, he’s allowing his mind to wander the familiar words of a tome he’s long trusted. He luxuriates in the other curious commonality of books and dreams: giving agency to the whims of the subconscious. He’s allowing his own memories to filter in and around the words. New associations, new connections, new sides to old friends.

  
And so it was, subconsciously, that he indulges in a habit he had acquired some years earlier when Warlock first <strike>caught</strike> discovered him with a book in the garden.  


He gets to a particularly moving part of the story, sighs fondly. And runs his fingers lightly through Crowley’s hair.  


Warlock, as it happened, wasn’t terribly fond of the stories Brother Francis had tried to read him. That is to say, the stories themselves were fine—just not the strange gravelly tones that the old gardener used to read them, slipping in and out of accents, or higher and lower like an old radio that wasn’t terribly concerned about staying tuned. Warlock told him once (with a tone of such blithe cruelty that he’d earned a rare bark of laughter from the ever-watchful Nanny) that it was _quite_ alright if he just read quietly to himself.

Aziraphale is too engrossed to notice the subtle rhythms of Crowley’s sleeping give way to a much tenser stillness. Oblivious, he comes to a jolly rhyme in the text and his fingers daintily tap along.

What Warlock did like, and what he kept coming back for, was the intoxicating, all-consuming sense of peace and _rightness _he felt when Brother Francis had a book in hand and a warm spot to sit beside him. Whenever there was a scraped knee, or a friendly spat, (or a very very unfriendly spat like he’d had with the supposed “cousin” who’d come to stay with them for a few awful, awful weeks) Brother Francis could be found, and quite easily compelled, to open a book and (quietly) sit, and sit, and sit, until whatever troubles the world had were just as small and made up as the smallest words in the biggest books. He’d pat Warlock’s head, and tell him the stories through gentle gestures that didn’t convey much but somehow meant everything, and Warlock would drift off to sleep.

~

Crowley is, in no way, shape, or form, sleeping.

He means to cough, or shift slightly, or somehow indicate to Aziraphale that the Things he is doing in his hair are...not unwelcome per se but, also, maybe he could have been given a warning, thank you very much? Physical contact had been, up to this moment, either brief or functional. They’d brushed hands before. Shaken hands. He’d once felt Aziraphale’s breath on his collarbone as they’d both leaned to look out the back window of the Bentley, and he’d had to do a Lot of thinking about that one. Being human gave a person Feelings, and Feelings made a body more human. It was a vicious cycle.

He’d have had it easier in the beginning, presumably. His earthly body was in many ways his own creation; a mishmash of demonic “miracles” cobbled together as he needed them to keep up an adequate facsimile of corporation. He hadn’t been issued a proper body to use for temptations; he’d barely been given a mission.

He’d used references. Over the years he’d delved into the vast body of knowledge the humans were acquiring about their own inner workings and, sometimes, if it sounded reasonable, applied it to himself. Most of the time, he could slough off the things he didn’t like with a thought. A misguided appendix one year, ethers and ichors instead of blood for an uncomfortable while, and that whole era where the cutting edge of science suggested that the seat of consciousness lived in the heart (maybe that’s what did him in after all).

Because the problem now was the Feelings. He hadn’t decided to put them in, so he wasn’t sure where to pull them out.

One thing he did know, was that the more time and effort a demon like himself put into perfecting something, tending the details, making Choices and enjoying the results...the more Feelings seemed to reside there. Crowley tries to grit his teeth as quietly as possible. Aziraphale is now gently (always gently) twining thin locks of his hair, his _hair, his goddamn demonically miracle-laden hair, _around his index finger.

Which is why all the effort in the world couldn’t prevent the inevitable: when Aziraphale reaches a particularly _gripping_ part of the story, Crowley goes to exhale another forcefully quieted breath, and moans.

They both freeze.

The pleasant anesthesia of Aziraphale’s story evaporates with a jolt up his arm. He’s released his grip instantly but takes a moment longer to register what the hand is doing; like it isn’t quite his, like it had simply wandered into Crowley’s hair of its own volition and fallen asleep there.

  
He gives another experimental squeeze.

  
Crowley’s _God-damned_ treacherous throat does it again.

  
“Oh...” says Aziraphale. “Oh, OH! I’m sor--”

He snatches his hand away as Crowley springs to the other side of the couch.

“_I’m _sorry!” hisses Crowley menacingly.

  
They stare at each other, wide-eyed, for another few seconds. Two animals of wildly different species, diving for a morsel and realizing, too late, that they’re not alone. A standoff.

Crowley breaks the silence with an unintelligible sound, and Aziraphale speaks first.

“I—I used to play with Warlock’s hair like that; you might have seen me some days—” (of course he had. Now he remembers. Which means Aziraphale has an unimpeachable excuse, which makes things a hundred times worse.)

“—and oh, Crowley, this was terribly impolite of me. I--” Aziraphale leans toward Crowley with wide eyes and a near-whisper. “I didn’t _hurt _you, did I?”

“_Hurt_ me?” Crowley blusters, momentarily scandalized at the implication that hands that were gentle enough for a child’s head (Antichrist or not) were too rough for him. “No, of course not. You surprised me is all. I was asleep and—”

  
He registers the glint of mischief in Aziraphale’s eyes a fraction of a second too late. The bastard knew _damn well _what that sound had been.

A flare of anger softens his position, plastered as he was to the far end of the couch. The mischief has blossomed into a glimmer of smugness fighting to break through the caricature of worry on Aziraphale’s face. “_Did you mean to do all that??”_ Crowley chokes.

Aziraphale, to his credit, looks genuinely chagrined. “No, no. I hadn’t realized it had gotten to be such a habit. I didn’t think it would come up again. Not too many little Antichrists needing tending running about in this shop, ha ha!” He takes an impossibly small sip of tea, watching Crowley alertly.

Crowley is at a clear disadvantage here. First with the...involuntary throat spasms, and second with the obvious lie. He decides to throw in the towel, knowing that Aziraphale prefers his spoils of war to come, at worst, in the form of a lecture. Scowling, he braces for it.

  
“I should have been more careful, truly,” says Aziraphale slowly, testing the waters. Then, gaining momentum, “I’ve seen how much Effort you’ve put into your hair over the years. Delightful results, no one would deny it! But of course, with your _infernal __composition__—” _

_There _it was. That tired old barb, blunt and nearly ineffective with overuse. Crowley scoffs and rolls to his feet before Aziraphale finishes the thought with a lofty flourish:

“—one knows that indulging in such vanities comes with _sensitivities._”

  
“My composition—! That’s a low blow, don’t you think,” he deflects, defiant in defeat. Aziraphale merely hums a noncommittal response, satisfied with his victory. He returns to his tea but, perhaps diplomatically, not his book.

Aziraphale’s corporeal form was issued to him; a pristine uniform for his immortal soul. None of this trial and error business that had, among its side effects, “sensitivities”. So what if Crowley had to try once or twice or a hundred times to get something just right. He was his own creation. What would an angel know about trial and error? The angelic way was to claim righteousness regardless of the result.

What would an angel know about his “sensitivities”?

_How _would an angel know?

  
Crowley pauses his pacing, quirking a smile where Aziraphale can’t see it. How would, for instance, this _specific_ angel know that, of all things, _indulgences _were to blame.

  
He meanders around the back of the couch and lounges down on an elbow. Aziraphale perches forward in his seat, sensing a change in the game.

“Do you mean to tell me that your lot don’t have the same issue?” A trap.

“Oh, Good Lord, of course not!” A _lie. _Crowley knows it. Allows himself a smile out in the open. And when Aziraphale meets his eyes, the look says he most definitely knows too. The jig is up, the ball is in Crowley’s court. Aziraphale’s lips flatten into a line of mild exasperation. A small sigh.

  
“Well, go on then.”

  
Crowley tilts his head in question. Aziraphale tilts his head toward Crowley. He looks up at him expectantly. He’s already failing to hold a straight face.

“Go ahead and touch it. My hair.”

  
Crowley was not expecting this.

  
“I don’t know if--”  
“Come now, it’s only fair!”

Crowley grumbles and grudgingly reaches out, trying his best to indicate with body language that this is a _chore,_ not something he _asked _for, and certainly never something he’s—

Oh. Its not as soft as he’d thought. Not feather down, or lambs’ wool. More springy than he’d expected. Well, wasn’t that just appropriate. Even his hair was tougher than it looked.

  
“You need to use better shampoo.”

He withdraws his hand, and either relief or disappointment flickers across Aziraphale’s face. He reaches up to pat smooth the places Crowley had barely touched.

“The barber tells me that my hair is in _excellent_ condition, if you must know.”

“Nnf” retorts Crowley, no longer sure what to do with his hands or where the conversation was going. He knows he vaguely regrets some parts of the evening, but isn’t sure which.

“And. And _as _I was saying, we angels don’t fall to the same temptations,” Aziraphale says with shaky confidence.

Ah. So he was proving something to himself. He’d had the same thought as Crowley, just then, that maybe they weren’t so different in their makeup, after all this time, after all. There had been many pairs of moments like this, over the years. One moment feeling like they were cut, side by side, from the same cloth, the next realizing that even pieces cut from the same cloth can be sewn into opposing battle flags.

Neither of them acknowledges the isolating chill that the conclusion of their experiment brings with it.

  
Crowley sinks back into the couch. He looks like he might have another go at a nap, though this time his feet are pointedly oriented in Aziraphale’s direction. Aziraphale doesn’t blame him. He considers for a moment, then deems it too crude to return his chair so quickly to its original spot across the room.

Instead, Aziraphale nestles deeper. Picks up his book. Picks up his tea, and takes a sip. Savors how the warmth spreads throughout his body. Tea is a marvelous invention, really. Simple, elegant, and effective. He pulls another aromatic taste past his lips, and hums a little in appreciation. Crowley is watching him with mild curiosity.

  
Realization hits them both at the same time.

Crowley’s hair is meticulously kept and occasionally experimented upon and always, always artfully adapted to suit him.

Aziraphale’s short curls are a distant afterthought by comparison.

But there, pressed up against the warm rim of his teacup, is something Aziraphale thinks about quite a lot.

  
Aziraphale’s eyes widen with horror. Crowley looks on the verge of a cackle.

“Telll me, _Angel,_” he drawls, “what _sensitivities might _someone of a _certain __com__position_ experience if they happened to be prone to, ohh, _gourmet_ indulgences?”

  
Aziraphale has set down the teacup, but is hiding his mouth behind his hand. A brave attempt at modesty, given that in 6000 years Crowley has rarely seen it covered before. Above the hand, Aziraphales eyes are flashing, and his cheeks turning red.

  
“Heaven ought to keep a close eye on _someone_ like that, seems like a _ripe_ opportunity for all sorts of of indecency.”

  
Aziraphale clearly wants to respond, to defend himself, but he’s become keenly and distractingly aware of how every word Feels as it forms on his lips.

  
“I’ll bet that someone would do positively _obscene_ things to oysters”

“I’ll bet—”  
“Oh, get out already.”

  
Well then, the fun was over. Crowley peels himself off of the couch for the second time in an unhurried shuffle of limbs, still holding down the twitching remains of the cackle. Aziraphale had dropped the useless pretense of his hand, still glowering. _A__n__ angry kitten gotten itself into a fix it couldn’t get out of_, Crowley thinks to himself.

“Oh, don’t be mad, Love,” he offers gaily, echoing the pet name he had used (sparingly, only when absolutely necessary) with Warlock. And then, the coup de grâce:

  
“Fancy a kiss before I go?”

  
And then Crowley’s brain catches up with his mouth, joining Aziraphale where he’d been for the past minute or so of their conversation. Connecting the dots between his hair and how it felt to be touched, to their shared understanding of _sensitivities, _to Aziraphale’s lips and what he’d just offered, how it might Feel to do what he just offered to do.

No one was winning their game of wits this night.

“I’ll just—”  
“Please do.”

Crowley wanders back to the Bentley, and they wander home in a daze.

~

Aziraphale purses his lips, newly aware of their feel on his face. His body is standard issue, more or less, but over millennia on earth preserving it and repairing it and occasionally (more than occasionally) granting its mundane desires, he has slowly but surely pushed and prodded this rigid tool of divine intent into something that was, against the odds, all his own.

He knew they’d want it back someday. Not without warning; certainly not until after the War (Heaven willing), but he had wondered, if he took just a little too much damage, perhaps just a hair shy of discorporation, if they might let him keep the old wreck after all…

And this! How could he live with himself if some poor unsuspecting foot soldier was issued his old body (nevermind what for) and was left to navigate the indelible effects of millennia of consumption, of _appreciation_ for crepes and cakes and perfectly brewed tea. _And all the other things he might ever taste._ No! No. The point was, it would certainly be too much for just anyone. It was best that Aziraphale and Aziraphale alone be responsible for the idiosyncrasies of his well-lived flesh.

In any case, if Warlock faced the odds and lived up to his potential for Good, they wouldn’t have to worry about any of that for a long time.

~

~

~

~

Which, as it happened, meant he’d have plenty of time to worry about the other thing.

  
“_Fancy a kiss before I go?”_

He was going to go back to his book and never think about this night again.

“_Fancy a kiss before I go?”_

His lips on his teacup felt like they took up half his face. Was there any way to reverse this? A body shouldn’t be able to do this _to_ him.

“_Fancy a kiss before I go?”_

Maybe he should try sleeping. He didn’t want any of this nonsense to get irrevocably tangled up in the words of his favorite books.

“_Fancy a goodnight kiss?”_

Oh, come on now. That’s not even what he’d said.

  
And so he bundles himself into his seldom-used bed, slows his breath, and tries to remember the tricks of lulling himself to sleep. It isn’t as difficult as he remembered, and he _i__s _very tired. Soon enough his heart rate slows, his eyelids feel heavy, and he feels the soothing weight of unconsciousness pressing into his mind.

And there, somewhere halfway into a dream, he sees Crowley’s face, eyes alight with the joke they were sharing, delighted by his temporary discomfort (had he been uncomfortable? It didn’t feel like it now).

“_I bet you do obscene things to oysters.”_

“Just you wait” he mumbles into his pillow.

~

**Author's Note:**

> *Spreads the Saltine crumbs in the notes* _For the ducks._
> 
> (1) I genuinely feel love for these fictional men in my real heart  
(2) I tried to embrace the idea that these guys are High Class Dumb Ass, and I hope it shows.  
(3) Crowley counting the years they were with Warlock is that gif of a rich lady talking about the price of bananas (but only because I myself do not know so I guess who is the Dumb Ass now)  
(4) I want to make it clear that Aziraphale never like, pulled baby Warlock’s hair or anything. He may not have been paying attention but his hand was speaking hand language and knows how to talk to babies  
(5) Aziraphale has never held a straight face in his life  
(6) Consider: Crowley’s “intelligible sounds” as the shriek of a seagull, yes you’re welcome  
(7) Aziraphale has Feelings a Lot too, which is why he gets the gist of what’s going on with Crowley’s hair-moan, but it hasn’t occurred to him to identify his own region of Highly Concentrated Feelings (HCFs). They’re working it out as a team and I think that’s beautiful.  
(8) Consider: The next time Aziraphale sees him, Crowley has cut his hair to the ‘present day’ look :’’’)  
(9) I looked it up and apparently it was just Aristotle that thought the brain wasn’t where the mind lived? I mean he was pretty influential but Crowley is definitely overstating one dude’s ramblings as being the “cutting edge of science” smh
> 
> I have never posted fiction on line in my life, so this is dedicated to the people who have run out of content and are willing to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get it, many kisses 2 you =3=;


End file.
